|
Zaire THE STATUS OF WOMEN
Women in Zaire in the 1990s have not attained a
position of
full equality with men. Although the Mobutu regime has
paid lip
service to the important role of women in society and
although
women enjoy some legal rights (e.g., the right to own
property and
the right to participate in the economic and political
sectors),
custom and legal constraints still limit their
opportunities.
The inferiority of women was embedded in the indigenous
social
system and reemphasized in the colonial era. The
colonial-era
status of African women in urban areas was low. Adult
women were
legitimate urban dwellers if they were wives, widows, or
elderly.
Otherwise they were presumed to be femmes libres
(free
women) and were taxed as income-earning prostitutes,
whether they
were or not. From 1939 to 1943, over 30 percent of adult
Congolese
women in Stanleyville (now Kisangani) were so registered.
The taxes
they paid constituted the second largest source of tax
revenue for
Stanleyville.
Opportunities for wage labor jobs and professional
positions
remained rare even after independence. For example, in
Kisangani
there were no women in law, medicine, or government in
1979,
nineteen years after independence. Moreover, educational
opportunities for girls remained constricted compared with
those
for boys.
By the 1990s, women had made strides in the
professional world,
and a growing number of women now work in the professions,
government service, the military, and the universities.
But they
remain underrepresented in the formal work force,
especially in
higher-level jobs, and generally earn less than their male
counterparts in the same jobs.
In addition, certain laws clearly state that women are
legally
subservient to men. A married woman must have her
husband's
permission to open a bank account, accept a job, obtain a
commercial license, or rent or sell real estate. Article
45 of the
civil code specifies that the husband has rights to his
wife's
goods, even if their marriage contract states that each
spouse
separately owns his or her own goods.
Adapting to this situation, urban women have exploited
commercial opportunities in the informal economy, outside
of men's
control. They generally conduct business without bank
accounts,
without accounting records, and without reporting all of
their
commerce. Anthropologist Janet MacGaffey's study of
enterprises in
Kisangani showed that 28 percent of the city's large
business
owners not dependent on political connections were women;
these
women specialized in long-distance distribution and retail
and
semi-wholesale trade. About 21 percent of the retail
stores in the
commercial and administrative zone of the city were
women's, and
women dominated the market trade.
Rural women find fewer such strategies available.
Saddled with
the bulk of agricultural work, firewood gathering, water
hauling,
and child care, they have generally seen an increase in
their labor
burdens as the economy has deteriorated. In Zaire's
eastern
highlands, conditions have grown particularly severe. The
statepromoted expansion of cash-crop hectarage for export,
particularly
of coffee and quinine, has reduced the amount and quality
of land
available for peasant household food-crop production.
Plantations
owned by the politico-commercial and new commercial elites
have
increasingly expanded onto communal lands, displacing
existing food
crops with cash crops. And within peasant households,
men's control
of the allocation of household land for export and food
crops has
led to greater use of land for export crops and the
diminution of
women's access to land and food crops.
Even when male producers turn to cultivating food
crops, the
household does not necessarily profit nutritionally. Food
needed
for household consumption is frequently sold for cash,
cash needed
to pay for daily necessities, clothes, school fees, taxes,
and so
on. Higher-priced and nutritionally superior food crops
such as
sorghum are frequently sold by producers who eat only
their
cheaper, less nutritious food crops such as cassava.
Widespread
malnutrition among children has resulted.
Among groups where women have more power, the situation
is less
severe. Among the Lemba, for example, women not only have
more say
in determining what is grown but also in what is consumed.
In a
country where the most widespread pattern is for the men
to be
served the best food first, with the remainder going to
women and
children, Lemba women traditionally set aside choice food
items and
sauces for their own and their children's consumption
before
feeding the men their food. Their nutritional status and
that of
their children is correspondingly better.
Rural women have arguably borne the brunt of state
exactions.
In some cases, women have banded together to resist the
rising
tolls and taxes imposed on them. Political scientist
Katharine
Newbury studied a group of Tembo women growers of cassava
and
peanuts west of Lac Kivu who successfully protested
against the
imposition of excessive collectivity taxes and market
taxes levied
on them when they went to market. The local chief was
hostile. But
a sympathetic local Catholic church, which provided a
forum for
meetings and assistance in letter writing, was helpful, as
was the
ethnic homogeneity of the group. Although they could not
nominate
a woman for election to the local council, they did
succeed in
voting for males friendly to their position. The newly
elected
councillors hastened to suspend the taxes and the tolls.
Not all women's organizations have been equally
successful. In
Kisangani the Association of Women Merchants (Association
des
Femmes Commerçantes--Afco) failed to advance the interests
of the
assembled women merchants. The group instead turned into a
vehicle
for class interests, namely those of the middle-class
president.
MacGaffey clearly saw the case as one of the triumph of
class
solidarity over gender solidarity.
A continuing challenge for women has been the limited
integration of women's experience and perspectives into
the
development initiatives of Western development agencies.
As Brooke
Schoepf has documented, little effort has been made to
create
agricultural extension networks for women, who have
continued to
contribute the overwhelming bulk of agricultural labor. In
addition, project production goals rarely have taken into
account
the effect of the withdrawal of women's time from current
food
production and household work to meet the goals of the new
programs. Development in such a context often has meant a
step
backward rather than a step forward from the perspective
of the
women being "developed."
Data as of December 1993
|
